


Tags

by Nebulad



Series: Dirty Wastelander [3]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: Blind Betrayal spoilers, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 02:03:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6545989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nebulad/pseuds/Nebulad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She leaned over to try and kiss him from the top, and a glow from her shirt caught his eye. She never wore her holotags— she hadn’t, even when they were both soldiers and protocol was everything. <i>I don’t give a shit if anyone can identify my body,</i> she’d said, taking a drag off a cigarette he’d bummed her. <i>Leave it for the ferals, the fuck do I care?</i> It seemed highly irregular for her to suddenly change her mind— though perhaps now that she had a son to watch after she was more concerned with what happened to her remains. Of course…</p><p>“You aren’t Danse,” he said, looking up at her.</p><p>“Good eye.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tags

Dagna shouldn’t have been perched on the power armour rack like she was, but Danse hardly noted the breach of safety protocol anymore. If she wanted to climb something, she’d climb it and then make a face at him from the top— seeing as how he hadn’t been her superior officer in about six months, it was hardly his place to fuss anyway.

He just stationed himself near the rack, so he could break her fall.

She leaned over to try and kiss him from the top, and a glow from her shirt caught his eye. She never wore her holotags— she hadn’t, even when they were both soldiers and protocol was everything. _I don’t give a shit if anyone can identify my body,_ she’d said, taking a drag off a cigarette he’d bummed her. _Leave it for the ferals, the fuck do I care?_ It seemed highly irregular for her to suddenly change her mind— though perhaps now that she had a son to watch after she was more concerned with what happened to her remains. Of course…

“You aren’t Danse,” he said, looking up at her.

“Good eye.”

“You’re wearing my holotags.” He couldn’t say if she’d been wearing them since Listening Post Bravo. He didn’t remember her putting them on after giving them to her, though in fairness he didn’t remember much of that day at all. It was all a haze of panic and nausea that he preferred to forget altogether.

“Oh? Yeah. You want ‘em?” she asked, but he shook his head. Wearing them would remind him that they didn’t belong to him anymore, or worse remind him of the very first time he had ever flaunted orders so flagrantly when he handed the chain to Dag.

“I just don’t understand why you’re wearing them,” he said, gesturing for her to get down. She hopped to the floor and staggered a little, then grinned at him.

“Because I _lo-ve_ you,” she teased. A wave of awkwardness washed over him where he was hyper-aware that he was holding one of her hands after steadying her. She hadn’t let go yet. “And because I figured it would piss off Maxson.”

“Dagna.”

“Unclench, sir. If anyone needs to be stewing in a bit of insubordination, it’s Maxson. After what he did I had to think of the least obvious, nastiest thing to do to let him know _exactly_ what I thought.” She paused for a second, then smiled again and threw herself down into the armchair next to the rack. _“And_ I love you.”

Danse could have restarted the argument they’d been having for months— _Maxson wasn’t wrong in doing what he did—_ but he kept his mouth shut. It would always end the same way: she would cold-shoulder him for a little while, then show up with an offering of beer or snack cakes and they would mutually pretend like neither of them had said anything. He didn’t have the energy for it and he was trying to decide how to react to the gesture of her wearing his tags. He didn’t understand the sentimentality, if she truly meant it that way and wasn’t just joking (he was bad at picking that up too), but he recognized that (if it was genuine) it was something romantic that she was offering him.

“Whatever happened to _your_ tags?” he asked, unable to resist. The _purpose_ of tags was for identification and no matter how well intended the gesture was, it defeated that purpose to wear ones that weren’t your own.

“In the toolbox I think,” she said with a shrug. “Why, you gunna report me?”

He moved over to where she stored her things, kept labelled although piled haphazardly around the repurposed mayor’s office that they lived in. It didn’t take him long to find them, and he suspected she’d known _exactly_ where she’d put the tags and had been pretending to be casual. He didn’t understand _why,_ but he’d known her long enough that it wasn’t surprising. _Dagna Eld_ had been carved in by the scribes’ precise hands. “You should wear them,” he said sternly.

“Already got tags. You wear them,” she shot back. She was staring at him expectantly and he froze uncertainly. He could never tell if she was being serious or not. “Go on,” she encouraged, standing up to do the work for him. She slid her tags over his head and let them hang over his shirt, grinning up at him while he tried to decide how to react.

“This will be confusing for whoever finds our bodies,” he offered. He was almost positive that it hadn’t been the correct reaction, but Dagna snort-laughed and he decided it had been good enough.

**Author's Note:**

> If you read all my Dagna/Danse fics in a row it's like reading for three different sole survivors tbh, but I like this one best so let's go with this one. Joke-y irreverent Dag is the winner atm. [My writing blog is here]() if you happen to have a tumblr and happen to want hot n ready fic on ur dash, not just from me but from a whole bunch of people.


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